In general, rendering three-dimensional infrastructure (such as buildings) based upon two-dimensional aerial images and other geo-spatial information, and displaying that infrastructure on a computer (whether in a simulator, game or other) is challenging. In particular, streaming such three-dimensional geometric data in real time to the rendering engine of a simulator or game on a computer is problematic. Prior art approaches generate large databases of geometric data that cannot realistically be streamed to a client computer in real time during execution of a simulator or game on the client computer.
In short, there is not enough memory space on a client computer that is executing the rendering engine to save a holistic global data set of geometric data representing buildings, land use classifications, cultural variations of infrastructure, etc. Various products are able to create three-dimensional urban scenes, but their requirements for memory space and processing time are excessive and these products cannot be executed at run-time speed.
What is desirable is a technique that can reconstruct infrastructure in real time on a client computer without having access to full scene-specific data. One must also take into account available bandwidth and the actual performance of the application, simulator or game on the client computer.